Reading Poetry Can Help With Your Mental Wellbeing

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Many people find poetry therapeutic, here are some beautiful poems about pain that have helped my own mental wellbeing in the past.

There is nothing more comforting than truthful poetry about pain for me. It’s what helped me get through my lowest times. Poetry and art can soothe you so softly, can reach out to you so easily. It can remind you that you are not alone. Poetry can embrace so much grief and so much suffering, it’s a great way to address your own mental health from my experience.

What also helps and astonishes me is that those fantastic poets suffered from mental health issues but still produced an intense, outstanding body of work which lasted for centuries. Even the greatest minds were wounded. And this didn’t stop them, but it fueled them.

Psychologists have run studies that explore whether creativity is linked with mental illness; the old question if poets get depressed or if depressed people write poetry. There even is the Sylvia Plath effect, the theory that poets (or artists) are more susceptible to mental illness. This theory also implies that female poets are more likely to experience mental illness than other types of writers or other eminent women.

Whatever the truth is, here is a small collection of five poems that touched my heart and helped me greatly with my own mental wellbeing, in hopes it might resonate with others too.

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The first poem comes from the beloved Sylvia Plath, a beautiful poetess with a tragic life, whose heartbreaking work is loved and celebrated in the present by many. She wrote about death and the fears people were afraid to voice.

Mirror by Sylvia Plath

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.

Whatever I see I swallow immediately

Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.

I am not cruel, only truthful,

The eye of a little god, four-cornered.

Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.

It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long

I think it is part of my heart. But it flickers.

Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,

Searching my reaches for what she really is.

Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.

I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.

She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.

I am important to her. She comes and goes.

Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.

In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman

Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

This poem was written by Edgar Allan Poe, a master of melancholy and madness, whose self-medicating techniques included writing about spectacular visions. His work and persona are iconic, especially adored by English Literature students.

Alone By Edgar Allan Poe

From childhood’s hour I have not been

As others were; I have not seen

As others saw; I could not bring

My passions from a common spring.

From the same source I have not taken

My sorrow; I could not awaken

My heart to joy at the same tone;

And all I loved, I loved alone.

Then- in my childhood, in the dawn

Of a most stormy life- was drawn

From every depth of good and ill

The mystery which binds me still:

From the torrent, or the fountain,

From the red cliff of the mountain,

From the sun that round me rolled

In its autumn tint of gold,

From the lightning in the sky

As it passed me flying by,

From the thunder and the storm,

And the cloud that took the form

(When the rest of Heaven was blue)

Of a demon in my view.

This heart-wrenching poem comes from Emily Dickinson, the brilliant feminist poet who chose to live an isolated life thriving with creativity rather than face the outer world.

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, (340) by Emily Dickinson

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,

And Mourners to and fro

Kept treading – treading – till it seemed

That Sense was breaking through –

And when they all were seated,

A Service, like a Drum –

Kept beating – beating – till I thought

My mind was going numb –

And then I heard them lift a Box

And creak across my Soul

With those same Boots of Lead, again,

Then Space – began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a Bell,

And Being, but an Ear,

And I, and Silence, some strange Race,

Wrecked, solitary, here –

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,

And I dropped down, and down –

And hit a World, at every plunge,

And Finished knowing – then –

The fourth poem was written by the British Romantic poet John Keats, who tragically died at the age of twenty-five from tuberculosis. Despite this, he left a remarkable body of work. His poetry is characterized by sensual imagery and intense, extreme emotion.

Ode on Melancholy by John Keats

No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist

Wolf’s-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;

Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss’d

By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;

Make not your rosary of yew-berries,

Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be

Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl

A partner in your sorrow’s mysteries;

For shade to shade will come too drowsily,

And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.

But when the melancholy fit shall fall

Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,

That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,

And hides the green hill in an April shroud;

Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,

Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,

Or on the wealth of globed peonies;

Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,

Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,

And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.

She dwells with Beauty – Beauty that must die;

And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips

Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,

Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:

Ay, in the very temple of Delight

Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine,

Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue

Can burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine;

His soul shalt taste the sadness of her might,

And be among her cloudy trophies hung.

This beautiful poem was written by Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, who wrote prodigiously in several heteronyms including Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis, Alvaro de Campos, and Alexander Search in a mind-blowing manner, with entirely different writing styles. His response to existential melancholy was writing.

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I am an aspiring Romanian writer and activist based in the UK. I'm an introverted kind of soul and I'm currently writing for a few independent magazines and cultural platforms. My work tackles depression, mental health, gender issues and pain. I cried for a week when David Bowie died.